Anne Deleporte

DAZZLE

March 12 – April 17, 2014

In 2009 The Gaza Zoo was almost entirely destroyed, with many breeds missing. To please the children the directors of the zoo decided to paint remaining donkeys as zebras. This uncanny fact in the midst of a disturbing geo-political situation and its differences in media coverage is the starting point for my video [Dazzle].... Reality gradually fades away ...suddenly a painter applies zebra patterns onto a projected film of a donkey, frantically trying to match his markings with the animal's movements.

- Anne Deleporte, 2013

McClain Gallery is pleased to announce, in conjunction with FotoFest 2014, a solo exhibition with artist Anne Deleporte. Deleporte works across a variety of media including painting, sculpture, drawing, video, and numerous projects of hers have also taken shape as public installations. Consistent throughout her work is a a fascination with the seen and unseen and how photography and video can transform the mundane into something curiously strange.

Shown alongside her poignant video Dazzle are photographs of the ink brushstrokes that recreate the donkey-cum-zebra in the performance captured in her film. The inky gestures, once the painted stripes on a projected creature, now exist as photographs - glimpses of what once was whole. The ink, the brush marks and the grain of the paper are all captured in the prints, which play with the notion of illusion and give the viewer a rare view into the evolution of the work.

The latter part of Anne's exhibition is a series of works that the artist calls photo-frescos, described aptly as "part collage, part painting" by Sara Reisman, who curated Deleporte's recent installation at The Queens Museum at Bulova Corporate Center. Reisman further elaborated on the artist's choice of media and intent:

This is no doubt an artist's filter of the newspaper. Images are privileged over words, suggesting a different kind of literacy. Deleporte's selective reading creates a sense of order out of the glut of visual and textual matter we face daily, both awake and in dreams. The way in which Deleporte's work summarizes the news, bringing together chance occurrences in print media, is integral to her art, while it also leaves the door open to the viewer's subjective reading. If you happen to be an avid reader of the newspaper, you may feel familiar with what you're seeing, the gestalt of past papers read. Or, specific symbols might trigger associations that have nothing to do with the artist's intentions...

Like the news itself, Deleporte's paintings leave certain details to the imagination. How one image or detail relates to another is part of the experiment. The real mystery is what Deleporte chooses to cover up.

Her large scale work has been presented in exhibitions at The Dallas Contemporary and Momenta Art in Brooklyn (both 2010); Museo do Paço Imperial and Galeria Laura Marsiaj in Rio de Janeiro (both 2009); and Prospect.1 New Orleans (2008). She is currently working on a commission from New York City's Percent for Art Program for a site-specific permanent artwork in the Highbridge Gardens School in the Bronx.